


Bits-and-bobs from the Mill

by afra_schatz



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Family Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, IKEA, M/M, Slice of Life, birthday fic, headcanons, pet spider, questionable interiour decoration choices, spiral staircase, the mill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-09 02:36:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11095125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afra_schatz/pseuds/afra_schatz
Summary: Glimpses into everyday life at the Mill, answering such important questions as: Why does Liv need a spider as a pet, how many fridges do they have and why does Aaron insist on them all, and what questionable habit does Robert bring back from France? - Humor, Family life, a bit of smut and a lot of eyerolling (mostly done by Liv).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [matan4il](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matan4il/gifts).



1 - Aaron might nick Robert’s boxers, but Robert regularly steals Aaron’s socks. It’s less for romantic reasons and more because his own keep disappearing.

2 - Robert thinks they should hire a landscape artist for the Mill’s garden. Aaron says that this is poncy and they should just buy a lawnmower. 

3 - Liv somehow gets stuck with dishwasher duty. Aaron does laundry, Robert irons (which, in Liv’s mind, is fucking unfair because it’s only his idiotic shirts that need ironing anyway), so it falls to her to take care of the dishes. Which is annoying, okay, but still better than the alternative; Aaron would probably just lick the plates clean.

4 - Aaron loves his husband, but he seriously contemplates buying another fridge with a lock, so he doesn’t come home and find it empty and Robert asleep on the couch, hands folded over a stomach filled with Aaron’s tea.

5 - Robert buys another fridge, one for upstairs, after Aaron nearly breaks his neck on the staircase due to hunger induced sleepwalking.

6 - Liv thinks that her brother sleepwalking is the most hilarious thing ever. Mostly because in that state of mind, she can talk him into doing all kinds of shit, like climb onto the kitchen table. About twenty minutes after Aaron left the bed, Robert goes searching for him. He finds his husband snoring on the kitchen table and Liv sitting on the floor, crying silent tears of laughter.

7 - Aaron is not a petty sibling at all which is why he absolutely doesn’t turn off the hot water when Liv is showering in the morning.

8 - Robert, slightly drunk after a night out with Bob (however that happened), spends half an hour watching Liv paint her toenails black.

9 - Liv offers to paint Robert’s purple. Thankfully, her drawer in the bathroom is an absolute mess and before she can find the paint, Aaron comes home and intervenes.

10 - Aaron buys three deckchairs for the Mill’s garden. Because sun and Robert equals freckles.

11 - Robert buys a lawnmower and says that this means Aaron will have to do the mowing. Preferably shirtless.

12 - Liv thinks everyone but her living in the Mill is absolutely disgusting.

13 - Aaron constantly leaves shit lying on the staircase. Liv and Robert constantly nearly break their necks because of this.

14 - Robert somewhat accidentally gets addicted to nature programmes. Aaron privately thinks it’s rather adorable. 

15 - Liv doesn’t. Next time he has to hear about mating habits of penguins when Robert takes her to school, she is gonna stab him.

16 - Aaron still has no idea why there is a bloody Vespa parked in their living room. Robert says it’s for home decor reasons and no, Liv can’t have it to terrorize the village.

17 - Robert finds his husband on the floor in front of the Mill’s stained glass doors. Aaron looks up at Robert and says that their front door is the prettiest in the village. Robert helps him up and casually asks how many pints he and Adam drank in the last couple of hours.

18 - Liv wants a pet. Aaron and Robert aren’t opposed to the idea. Liv wants a bird-eating spider.

19 - Aaron uses one of Robert’s paperbacks to fix the wobbly coffee table. Robert is not best pleased about it. Aaron tells him to stop being a baby. Robert wants to know what Aaron would say if he, Robert, used Aaron’s stupid toast for the same purpose. 

20 - Robert sleeps on the couch. One doesn’t even joke about misappropriation of toast.

21 - Liv sings under the shower. It would probably be adorable and Robert in particular would mock her for all eternity, if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s Children of Bodom.

22 - Aaron has a fight with the lawnmower the second time he uses it. It doesn’t end well for the flowerbed. Or the lawnmower.

23 - Robert hires a landscape artist. He tells his husband and his sort-of-daughter / sister-in-law to shut it.

24 - Liv buys a bird-eating spider and names it Suggle.

25 - Aaron and Robert have nightmares.

26 - Robert and Aaron attend parent-teacher-evening at Liv’s new school because they are a proper little family and that’s just what you do. Particularly if you need to explain why your sister / sister-in-law / sort-of-daughter had very good reasons for taking her bird-eating nightmare to school with her.

27 - Liv stops hiding Robert’s socks.

28 - Aaron doesn’t stop stealing Robert’s boxers.

29 - Robert calls Aaron’s Mitsubishi ‘Optimus Prime’. Aaron calls his husband a massive nerd.

30 - Liv’s phone has 267 pictures on it. 29 of them are Aaron pulling a face, 14 are of Robert sleeping (which she didn’t take for Aaron, though she knows that her brother likes them, massive sap that he is, but because it’s hilarious to startle Rob with the flash), 35 are of Suggle’s visit to the Woolie.

31 - Aaron thinks a perfect family dinner consists of the three of them on the couch, feet on the coffee table and a car chase on the telly.

32 - Robert thinks a perfect family dinner consists of the three of them on the couch, feet on the coffee table and Liv not stealing his chips.

33 - Liv loses some change on the sofa and, searching for it in the cracks, she finds a strip of condoms, a screwdriver, half a Mars bar, and a Wham CD. Her family is so fucking disgusting.

34 - Aaron tries to hang the framed pictures from their second wedding. When in the aftermath, Robert suggests they should maybe hire someone to fix that giant hole in the wall, Aaron threatens to divorce him.

35 - Robert and Aaron and Liv decide that they don’t actually need the money from renting out the second flat. They’d rather have the place for themselves.


	2. 35 more bits and bobs from the Mill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 35 more more or less connected little details from the every day lives of Robert, Aaron, and Liv. And Liv's bird-eating spider.

36 - Liv full on snorts when someone (Robert, because he is mental) suggests that she should get a part time job. She is full on offended when Aaron weighs his head from side to side, munching cereal, and says it wouldn’t hurt, would it. Liv will make sure it will hurt _someone_.

37 - Aaron likes to wake up to the sound of Robert’s voice. He likes sleeping in as much as the next bloke, but thing is, sometimes when Robert is proper engrossed in a book, he starts reading stuff out to himself. Mind, Aaron would prefer if Robert’s books were car manuals, though.

38 - Robert likes opening his eyes in the morning and find Aaron sleeping next to him. Robert does not like to open his eyes in the morning and find Suggles, Liv’s goddamn bird eating spider, sitting on his pillow.

39 - Liv likes Robert to open his eyes in the morning and find Suggles sitting on his pillow.

40 - Aaron tells Liv to get a bloody job, so she can buy his husband something to make up for the emotional trauma she caused him. He is not even laughing as he says it.

41 - Robert gets back at Liv by having very loud sex with her brother and thus traumatizing her as well. Even though he didn’t even mean to because she wasn’t supposed to be home this early. Skiving never paid off less.

42 - Liv really wishes she’d put her foot down a bit more when she and Robert were doing up the Mill. After all, she did pretty much all the painting, and she picked out the furniture that doesn’t look like it came straight out of the decoration wanking fantasies of a hipster. And okay, Robert did totally cave and gave her the room with the best view. But she should’ve gotten it sound-proofed, too.

43 - Aaron really doesn’t think the Mill could be any more perfect. Even if he doesn’t get the purpose of half of the stuff that is standing / lying around / on the walls. He and Adam spend an evening on the couch in the living room, trying to suss out why someone nailed billiard balls to the wall. Adam says it’s probably art. Aaron calls him a muppet.

44 - Robert is the worst employer on the planet. Everyone in the village already knew that, and that includes Aaron who, in hindsight, reckons that a lot of their affair era sex was initiated by him being pissed off at Robert’s demands and needing to shut him up. It is why their landscape artist (not gardener, Aaron) has to be hired from way out of town and still quits after an afternoon with Robert in the garden. Robert likes his shrubbery symmetrical, okay?

45 - Liv is the worst employee on the planet. Bob knows he always deeply regrets it when Robert talks him into things, but this might reach a whole new level of remorse.

46 - Aaron doesn’t use the silver keyring he got on the day he bought the Mill for them. 

47 - Robert does. And whenever he is waiting - in line at David’s, at the bar in the Woolpack, in the waiting room of Aaron’s counselor’s office - he is playing with it absentmindedly, like Aaron does with his ring.

48 - Liv is Noah’s hero. Partly because she is cool, but mostly because of Suggles and how Suggles made Noah’s mum stand on the bar of the Woolie for half an hour, refusing to get down before ‘that horrible spider is out of here’.

49 - Aaron sometimes stands under the shower for twenty minutes, just because he can and because (unlike back at the Woolie) here the hot water just never seems to run out. Might be a bit self-indulgent. But he is married to a man who spends a small country’s GDP on beauty products (they aren’t beauty products, Aaron, for fuck’s sake, how often do I have to tell you this, I just like them), so he reckons he still comes out ahead.

50 - Robert buys Aaron thirty quid hair gel. 

51 - Liv is honestly the worst employee on the planet. Bob really can’t stress this enough. Everyone is scared of the sullen barista who slams down the ordered coffee and silently dares you to say something about the slam-related spillage. Well, not everyone, Bob supposes. Aaron usually now has his coffee with a huge smile on his face. Which is when Bob remembers why he constantly lets Robert talk him into things, fine.

52 - Aaron spends a little too much time with Vic and subsequently decides that he is going to make tea for them every Thursday, all proper like. Liv and Robert both nod in appreciation and also have the numbers of several pizza taxis saved on their phones.

53 - Robert sometimes works at the kitchen table, and then he gets no work done at all, because he just sits there at their kitchen table, in their kitchen of their house and is honestly too baffled by how this happened to bother with invoices.

54 - Liv sometimes comes home and finds her brother and his idiot husband snogging, half sprawled over the kitchen table. I fucking eat there, you idiots, is what she usually says and kicks Robert’s leg as she rounds them to get to the fridge.

55 - Aaron loves his beer fridge.

56 - Robert gets growled at when he attempts to put other things but beer into the beer fridge (if you want your wine cold, Robert, buy a wine fridge but keep that stuff out of there).

57 - Liv and Bob have an argument over Liv bringing Suggles to work with her. When Bob tells Robert about it later, he claims that he won. Robert laughs in his face.

58 - Aaron spends an evening trapped on their bed under Robert’s fucked out, sleeping dead weight. His phone is in the living room, so he looks at the spines of the rows and rows of Robert’s books on the shelf in the corner, his hand in the back of Robert’s neck. When Robert wakes, as per usual about half an hour after having passed out, Aaron informs him that he might consider reading a second book.

59 - Robert buys Aaron [’The Art of Racing in the Rain’](https://www.bookdepository.com/The-Art-of-Racing-in-the-Rain-Garth-Stein/9780061780301?redirected=true&utm_medium=Google&utm_campaign=Base1&utm_source=US&utm_content=The-Art-of-Racing-in-the-Rain&selectCurrency=USD&w=AFCCAU9934GUN8A8ZTPQ&pdg=kwd-19&_source=Affiliate_WindowUS&utm_medium=Affiliate_Marketing&utm_campaign=271445&awc=5487_1497041669_f92e0ead3b587e58badf7635a7f9527e) the next time he is in his bookshop in Hotten.

60 - Liv endures up to 25 minutes of her brother and her totally-not-sort-of-step-dad-fuck-off having one of their snarkuments before she has to leave the house. Not that she couldn’t take more of these two muppets griping at one another. But she knows from experience that by minute 30 the mood will have shifted to that other thing the two of them do all the time and she will be even more traumatized than she already is.

61 - Aaron thinks that Robert’s casually vicious mouth is one of the hottest things about him. Not that he is ever telling Robert that.

62 - Robert knows exactly what Aaron is thinking when Aaron’s gaze zones in on Robert’s lips.

63 - Liv wants to spend some of the money she earned being rude to Bob’s customers.

64 - Aaron shrugs and says sure, you earned it, and continues shoving Frosties into his mouth.

65 - Robert looks up from his newspaper, skeptical.

66 - Liv announces she wants to buy a moped. Robert has his stupid old man Porsche, Aaron drives this thing that is stuck under the giant aerofoil, and Liv needs to get to places without dying of embarrassment. She wants a moped.

67 - Aaron says no.

68 - Robert says absolutely not.

69 - Liv buys a moped. 

70 - Aaron and Robert get accidentally run over by Liv’s moped in the driveway of the Mill. Well, maybe not entirely accidentally.


	3. #71-105

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 35 more bits and bobs from the Mill

71 - Robert is the only one in their household who knows how to sew.

72 - Liv says it is because he has to attach his stupid elbow patches to stuff himself because there is no way that any shops aside from thrift stores actually sell this crap.

73 - Aaron gets up from the couch one evening to fetch crisps from the car but comes back in, a look of amazement on his face. When Robert enquires what that is all about, Aaron informs him that there is something like an actual thunderstorm going on outside and they hadn’t even noticed. Liv, from her comfy chair, says yeah, that is because our house, unlike the Woolie was done up properly, wasn’t it. She and Robert look intensely pleased with themselves.

74 - Robert is a little bit cross with Aaron when one morning in the portacabin, he tries to open his account on etsy only to find it deleted. No more random shit for our house, Aaron says from his desk. Robert wants to protest but then he remembers that he _was_ looking at car shaped beds the other day.

75 - Liv needs money for petrol for her moped and asks Bob for a raise. Bob refuses. Liv threatens to share very graphic details of Robert’s and Aaron’s sex life with each and every one of Bob’s customers. Bob gives her a raise. Seriously, he is the biggest mug in the world. Like Liv would ever have done that. Urgh.

76 - Aaron knows he is in the middle of another war when one morning, Liv suddenly yells bloody murder in the bathroom. 

77 - Robert, sitting across the breakfast table from Aaron, snickers to himself.

78 - Liv has to go to school with fucking elbow patches sewn to her school jumper. She nearly runs over Sandy because she is too furious plotting her revenge to actually look at the road.

79 - Aaron spends the better part of an afternoon trapped upstairs. Not for the usual reasons - Robert is away in Leeds - but because of Suggles who somehow escaped from his terrarium and is sitting on the staircase, blocking the way and hissing at him. Aaron hates Liv’s stupid spider. Suggles is pretty indifferent towards Aaron and just wants to get back upstairs.

80 - Robert receives texts in his meeting in Leeds that are riddled with spelling errors. That usually being a sure indicator for how upset Aaron is about something, Robert is just about to make his excuses and race home. That’s when Liv texts him fifteen laughing smileys and an ‘Aaron is such a wuss, prety sur its you’re influnce’. Robert relaxes in his chair and thinks that his family needs spelling lessons.

81 - Liv kind of nicks half a skeleton from her school’s biology lab.

82 - Aaron misses three calls from Liv’s head teacher because his phone slips out of his pocket when Robert gives him head in the Porsche on a lay-by.

83 - Robert nearly gets arrested for manslaughter. The same policeman who nearly caught them with that little shit Lachlan in the boot of Aaron’s car once again pulls up in front of them just as they get out of the Porsche. Not for public indecency - it’s pretty obvious that the policeman still thinks they should get a hotel room, but he lets it slide this time - but because there happens to be half a skeleton in his boot.

82 - Liv regrets nothing.

83 - Aaron gets called into Liv’s principal’s office.

84 - Robert ends up calling the principal a narrow-minded moron who can’t tell a harmless prank from serious crime. He nearly has to serve detention alongside Liv.

85 - Liv still regrets nothing. However, she might use some of the money she extorted from Bob to buy Robert a gift for his car. It’s an [air freshener](https://www.amazon.de/Ananas-Lufterfrischer-Duftbaum-Auto/dp/B01HQB1FMC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1497375057&sr=8-2&keywords=duftbaum+auto+ananas), and it cost her about three quid but Robert still almost tears up about it. Because he is a soft lad and also because Aaron’s presents always are even more rubbish (seriously, for his 31st, he gave Robert a screwdriver, a handful of half-melted Rolos, and an engraved coin or something). Also, probably because the air freshener stinks of pineapple.

86 - Aaron growls at Robert for putting champagne into the beer fridge. Robert is offended. Aaron says that he’s fine with Robert’s romantic notions and if Robert thinks that he needs to woo Aaron with candles and champagne, he’ll go along with it if he has to, but the beer fridge is for beer and how often does he have to say this. 

87 - Robert lets Aaron finish his weekly beer fridge rant. Then he explains that the champagne is a gift for a client but adds that if Aaron wants to be wooed like Bridget Jones, then Robert can do that.

88 - Liv comes home from school to find her brother and the other Mr Dingle standing in the kitchen - Robert with that shiteating grin on his face, Aaron like he is ready to pounce. Liv is so spending the night at Gabby’s.

89 - Aaron demands to know who the fuck Bridget Jones is.

90 - Robert doesn’t really have the chance to explain because he is too busy getting fucked against the beer fridge.

91 - Liv gets Robert to watch a programme on spiders with her and afterwards they argue for half an hour which one is better, the cartwheeling one or the silkhenge spider.

92 - Aaron meanwhile sits at the bar in the Woolie and, somewhat shitfaced, complains to Adam how having a giant spider is nothing like having a dog. He can’t even take the fucking thing for walkies, can he?

93 - Robert loves Formula One. There is something about the speed and the danger, the raw power and the inherent grace of the cars that does it for him.

94 - Liv loves boxing. People lamping each other is hilarious.

95 - Aaron loves the football. Because it’s the football.

96 - Robert readily agrees when his husband asks him whether he wants to join him and Adam in the stadium. Aaron is pleased. Adam isn’t. Because Adam, unlike his best mate, knows how this will end.

97 - Liv and Noah are making Suggles fight Robert’s Marvel Collectibles on the living room floor when Aaron and Robert come home way too early from the football. After taking one look at them, Liv immediately ushers Noah out of the house, yelling lalalala all the while and telling Noah to close his eyes if he doesn’t want to get scarred for life.

98 - Aaron has bruised knuckles because his idiot of a husband can’t keep his smart mouth under control in the football stadium for even five minutes. No one fucking touches Aaron’s idiot of a husband, though, not if Aaron has a say in the matter. Aaron also has said husband on his knees in the living room, putting his smart mouth to better use.

99 - Robert talks like he has laryngitis the next day. One of Home James’s new clients asks about it, compassionate, Nicola _very_ hurriedly changes the topic.

100 - Liv insists that Aaron take her to France with her when he is meeting another scrap contact there. Aaron says he would, but who would look after her horrible spider what with Robert being in Leeds again. Liv says they could take Suggles with them. He could stay in the Mitsubishi’s glove compartment.

101 - Aaron says no, absolutely not, no way, nuh-uh, nah, over my fucking dead body.

102 - Robert receives a text when he is in a meeting in Leeds, telling him to look after Suggles and not try to feed him candy again. Once back in Emmerdale, he pawns that off to Bob. There may or may not have been a. bribery, b. manipulation, c. threats involved. 

103 - Liv decides that they should have a standing order at David’s for croissants to be delivered to the Mill every morning. She has never seen her brother smile so much over a hotel buffet.

104 - Aaron fucking loves buttered croissants.

105 - Robert joins Aaron and Liv in France to make this a proper family holiday.


	4. No 106-140

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Important issues this one addresses: Why does Liv buy cheese, what is Aaron's opinion on hickeys, and why is Robert singing chansons in the Porsche?

106 - Liv comes back from their little holiday in France with an Eiffeltower keyring for Gabby, a hickey on her neck from this not bad French lad she met in a bistro, and a scarf with spiderweb print on it to hide aforementioned hickey from her overly protective family of two.

 

107 - Aaron comes back from France with a new scrap deal and roughly two kilos more of bodyweight due to croissants.

 

108 - Robert comes back from France with a newly found interest (it’s not love, Aaron, and it’s certainly no sick obsession, Liv, shut up, I was just humming along to one bloody song, okay) in French chansons.

 

109 - Liv disapproves.

 

110 - Aaron disapproves. Well, okay, he doesn’t really, at least not to the humming along. Robert attempting to sing in French, though? Aaron finally understands why all French people he talked to when he stayed with Ed always looked so permanently pained.

 

110 - Robert, once back at the Mill, loudly contemplates whether he should maybe take an online course in French, la language de love.

 

111 - Liv makes retching noises in the kitchen that are loud enough to scare Suggles, so Suggles seeks refuge under the fridge and refuses to come out for the next two hours.

 

112 - Aaron is extremely grumpy because he is fucking hungry and can’t get food from the fridge for reasons that have nothing to do with Suggles because Aaron is not afraid of his little sister’s pet spider. Aaron sits on the couch and sulks and wants a dog.

 

113 - Robert gets Aaron a beer and makes him a proper sarnie and does not put any of the horrible cheese on it that Liv insisted on buying in France. She can eat that all on her own.

 

114 - Liv doesn’t intent on eating the disgusting smelly cheese. She just bought it so Robert had to put it into his suitcase, stinking up his socks and stupid shirts. However, it will probably make for a decent thank you gift for Bob for babysitting Suggles.

 

115 - Aaron, two days after their return, drops Liv’s laundry onto her head while Liv is still sleeping. Liv flails and waves her arms around like she is drowning in freshly washed clothes. When she is done with that and glares up at Aaron, Aaron stands next to her bed and stares at the hickey on her neck.

 

116 - Robert is just about done shaving when frantical knocking on the bathroom door almost causes him to cut his own throat. The hammering is accompanied by Liv’s voice and she sounds hysterical, and Robert has already raised his Gillette Fusion ProGlide (ten quid for a razor, are you serious, Robert) in a sort of weapon like way, when Liv stops repeating his name and yells, oh God come out, come out, Rob, Aaron wants to talk to me about sex, and I can’t take it.

 

117 - Liv stands behind the door, not evesdropping or anything, but just casually overhearing. She hears how Robert uses his soft voice (the one he uses when he’s fucked up or when Aaron has a bad day) to tell Aaron about that time in March and the stupid idiots Gabby picked up. It is followed by a very loud - you what? - from her brother. Liv possibly has to emigrate.

 

118 - Aaron stress-eats some of the French cheese. It does not improve his mood.

 

119 - Robert collects Liv from the Woolie where she isn’t hiding in the kitchen, shut up. Back at the Mill, he attempts to lighten the mood by saying that it’s a good thing, then, that they already have so many condoms in the house, he and Aaron won’t miss a few.

 

120 - Liv disapproves.

 

121 - Aaron disapproves.

 

122 - Robert goes to sit in his car to listen to Jean Ferrat for ten minutes to calm his nerves. And also because he likes sitting in his car. And listening to Jean Ferrat in peace, fine.

 

123 - Liv promises to not have sex in the Mill and also to actually do the dishes regularly and not wait until they don’t have any more plates so Aaron has to eat shepards pie from his ‘best husband’ mug.

 

124 - Aaron pretends to believe her.

 

125 - Robert is still sitting in the Porsche singing along to Jean Ferrat. Give him a moment, okay.

 

126 - Liv informs Bob that she can’t do the dishes his café. She is already forced to do them at home and no sane person can expect her to suffer through that chore twice. Bob points out that he is paying her money. Liv wants to know what that has got to do with anything.

 

127 - Aaron says to Robert - when they are standing in their bathroom, brushing their teeth and Robert is just wearing a pair of boxers that are possibly Aaron’s - that he wouldn’t mind another romantic date, like.

 

128 - Robert looks like it’s Christmas. And also like he has rabies, because of the toothpaste foam.

 

129 - Liv comes back from her morning shift at Bob’s stupid café to find Robert hunched over the kitchen table like some demented general over battle plans. She rolls her eyes and goes to her room when she sees leaflets with headings such as ‘Romantic Getaways in the North of England’ strewn all over it.

 

130 - Aaron thinks Robert is being shifty. Well, shiftier than normal.

 

131 - Robert’s romantic getaway planning gets a bit out of hand. He has narrowed his ideas down to a ride in a zeppelin (because hot airballons are for peasants and also he likes the phallic symbolism), Disneyworld (until he remembers how Aaron threw up on him when last were on a roller coaster because - and Aaron can deny that all he wants - even a Dingle Iron Stomach can’t handle ten hot dogs) and a fortnight in the Amazon rainforest (because, Liv, it’ll be a laugh, you can visit Suggles’s relatives).

 

132 - Liv wants nothing to do with Robert’s plans. The last time she went along with one, they ended up with a spiral staircase. Also, she’s so not gonna spend her precious free time on playing travel agent in order to get her brother and his idiot of a husband laid. Because urgh.

 

133 - Aaron wakes Robert in the middle of the night because Robert is yelling nonsense - If you can’t work that stupid flying cigar, then let me drive, this can’t be too difficult, can it - in his sleep.

 

134 - Robert instigates emergency sex to distract Aaron from finding out about his zeppelin plans. It’s not that it’s that much of a hardship, really, unless you count Robert not being able to sit properly for the next day, which Robert doesn’t.

 

135 - Liv spends an afternoon painting skulls onto her moped. She offers to do the same to Robert’s car. Robert spends the afternoon watching Liv painting skulls onto her moped and making sure she is not getting anywhere near his car.

 

136 - Aaron comes home from the scrapyard to find that someone painted a spider onto the aerofoil of his Mitsubishi.

 

137 - Robert has to play mitigator again. He deserves a new Jean Ferrat CD.

 

138 - Liv doesn’t see the problem. She thinks she captured Suggles’s essence pretty well.

 

139 - Aaron has enough of Robert’s overboard romance scheming when he catches Robert drawing plans on how to build a roller coaster in the Mill’s garden. Aaron gives Liv ten quid to go to the movies or something, buys a crate full of good beer, puts on ‘The Phantom Menace’ and blows Robert while the pod race scene is on.

 

140 - Robert and Aaron sit on the couch when Liv comes home. She thinks, well that’s another decent movie ruined, when she finds the end credits of ‘The Phantom Menace’ rolling and Robert and Aaron trying to act all innocent, when Liv can see the fucking hickeys on both their throats. Do they think she is stupid or something?


	5. No 140-175

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when Liv, and Robert, and Aaron go to Ikea. Because I need IKEA fic in every fandom I write in. It's just a fact of life.

141 - Liv comes back from school to find it’s one of _those_ days with her stupid brother and his even stupider husband.

142 - Aaron and Robert snipe at each other. Neither of them actually remembers what started this off - maybe Robert used the last tea-bag, maybe Aaron used the wrong stuff for washing Robert’s shirts. 

143 - Robert and Aaron fight. And they should be amused, pleased even that their arguments are about these kinds of domestic little things now instead of, say, putting teenagers in the boot of their cars or trying to drown people in grain. But they aren’t.

144 - Liv grabs Suggles and flees from the house. When she comes back a couple of hours later, Robert and Aaron are all loved up again and suspiciously tired. Also, the kitchen table collapsed.

145 - Aaron says that is no problem, he can fix it. It’s not that difficult to hammer a couple of nails into wood, is it.

146 - Robert says that he’ll help. All three know that this means he is planning on standing around and offer a running commentary that will make Aaron want to punch him.

147 - Liv says that there’s no way that that table is getting fixed by anyone. She is not gonna eat brekkies from furniture that got broken because Aaron and Robert are too stupid to find their bedroom.

148 - Aaron is embarrassed.

149 - Robert points out that while it only broke now, they shagged on it plenty of times before.

150 - Liv insists they go shopping at IKEA and buy a new table _this instant_. Aaron will have to drive because his car is the only one into which a new table might fit since Robert’s boot is ridiculously smalll. Robert has to come and bring Home James’s business credit card because Aaron is notoriously skint since he has a tapeworm and spends all their money on food.

151 - Aaron really doesn’t want to go shopping.

152 - Robert really doesn’t want to go shopping at IKEA. IKEA is to furniture what a five pack of plain white t-shirts from Primark is to a wardrobe. Aaron and Liv give Robert frowns of incomprehension in response to that comparison.

153 - Liv puts her foot down. 

154 - Aaron drives them to IKEA the next morning.

155 - Robert and Liv start arguing over radio stations in the car. Robert wants to listen to Radio Four (because he is an old man, according to Liv), Liv wants to listen to Children of Bodom (because she is a tone-deaf child-hooligan, according to Robert). Both of them are bloody muppets, according to Aaron. The last fifteen miles of the drive are spent in tense silence.

156 - Liv regrets not bringing Suggles. She is sure a giant bird-eating spider would have brightend up Småland considerably.  
157 - Aaron’s mood brightens up considerably when he learns about IKEA’s restaurant. He ignores his husband’s and his sister’s protests and declares he is gonna stay there for the duration of their visit. They have a six items breakfast for 2.25. Aaron makes Robert hand him a fifty pound note and disappears.

158 - Robert and Liv bury the hatched in the living room section. They sit down on a sofa that is pretty similar to the one in the backroom of the Woolie, only that its pattern looks exactly like one of Robert’s shirts, according to Liv. There they stay for twenty minutes or so, Robert’s long legs causing three separate people to nearly trip over them, making Liv snicker. 

159 - Liv decides that she is going to spend some of the money she forced Bob’s customers to tipping her with to buy [a miniature Poäng chair](https://projectophile.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/img_2977.jpg) for Suggles. Aaw, is Suggles the name of your teddy bear, asks a pregnant women who overheard Liv’s and Robert’s conversation, has no concept of privacy and also thinks that fifteen year olds still have teddy bears. No, Robert says with his serious face, it’s her giant bird eating spider. My husband and I are tired of having to share our sofa with it.

160 - Aaron is on his third plate of beans and eggs when he receives a text from Liv that informs him that Robert isn’t that big of an idiot and that she will allow Aaron to keep him.

161 - Robert hadn’t known that IKEA sold fabrics. For about five minutes, he stands in front of a roll of [brightly coloured abstract floral print](http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/images/products/fredrika-fabric-multicolour__79467_pe203479_s5.jpg) and absentmindedly strokes the fabric until Liv makes a retching noise and tells him to get a room. Robert might just do that. And a sewing machine.

162 - Liv wants to put eight industrial-style desk lamps into their trolley. Robert approves of her taste until she informs him that she will use them to create [a giant spider lamp](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5b/e2/22/5be222746b4c02ecf89ef18ac4f1566c.jpg) hanging from the ceiling of the Mill’s sitting room.

163 - Aaron meanwhile has switched to salmon with wheat pilaf, mostly because the queue in front of the fish and chips was too long. When getting himself a refill of coke, a pregnant woman very obviously tries to flirt with him. Aaron doesn’t notice because he is too busy trying to figure out what the fuck ‘pilaf’ is supposed to be.

164 - Robert and Liv have an argument in the lamp section. Robert says that there’s no chance Liv will permanently traumatize Aaron (and him) by dangling a giant metal spider from the ceiling. 

165 - Liv says that Robert nailed billiard balls to the wall of the sitting room, he doesn’t get a vote.

166 - Aaron sees a pregnant woman walking past his table, holding an ice cream cone in each hand. He knows what he is gonna do next.

167 - Robert points out that Liv was the one choosing the spiral staircase which repeatedly tried to kill all three of them already, so Liv doesn’t get a vote either.

168 - Liv points out that the whole reason why they are here in the first place is because Robert and Aaron made it their life goal to traumatize her on a daily basis.

166 - Aaron gets two texts simultaneously, one from Robert (Your sister is an idiot.) one from Liv (Your husband is an idiot.). Aaron thinks that pilaf tastes kind of neat and he wonders whether Vic knows the receipe.

167 - Robert says fine, he’ll pay for the lamps if the metal-spider-creature goes into Liv’s room, not the sitting room.

168 - Liv makes retching sounds when a pregnant woman (seriously, what is it with IKEA and pregnant women?) makes an cooing noise at Robert and tells him that he is so good with his daughter.

169 - Aaron has ice cream.

170 - Robert sends Aaron six pictures of different kitchen tables, asking for his opinion. Surrounded by horribly mismatching chairs and an army of indecisive shoppers, Aaron’s answering text (Choose whichever you like. I trust you.) makes Robert almost tear up.

171 - Liv very nearly gets them thrown out of IKEA when she climbs onto a kitchen table and starts jumping up and down on it. When a pregnant (and at this point, who is surprised by this anymore) IKEA employee hurries towards her, asks her to stop that and why is she even doing that, she answers truthfully. It doesn’t really help diffusing the situation, but it gets Robert right out of his sudden weirdly funky mood.

172 - Aaron reckons he is full. It’s a concept that is foreign to him, and it vaguely disturbs him. What is a person supposed to do with their life if they can’t eat and their husband isn’t there for a bit of a snog? Aaron tries watching Top Gear on youtube but reception at IKEA is notoriously bad.

173 - Robert has just pacified the IKEA employee by telling her that it’s all right, they will just buy this table, when he receives a text from Aaron. Aaron very politely asks where they are and if it will take them much longer (If you’re not here in 5, I will go back w/o you).

174 - Liv scares people out of the way at the self-checkout line.

175 - Aaron, Robert, and Liv all silently agree that going to IKEA wasn’t the worst thing they have ever done. It is a bit cramped in the Mitsubishi on their way home, though. They maybe have to borrow Cain’s van next time.


	6. No 176-210

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What bits and pieces of furniture are Robert's, Liv's, and Aaron's favourites and why? This provides answers to these incredibly important questions and more.

176 - Robert is very happy with the couch he chose for the Mill. It looks great, and it is big enough for him and Aaron without either of them feeling like they are sitting on dollhouse furniture. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t usually sitting way too close than necessary anyway, ignoring Liv making retching noises from the comfy chair.

177 - Liv buys her brother and his stupidly handsy (and footsy, is that a thing? Because Rob is that, too) husband a blanket. It’s gray and has tiny yellow parrots woven into it, and it cost a bloody fortune. But it is big enough to cover them up, so Liv doesn’t have to bear witness to their idiotic cuddling all the time.

178 - Aaron loves the blanket because it is comfortable and stores heat like nobody’s business.

179 - Robert loves the blanket because Aaron drapes it over them and then slips his hand under Robert’s t-shirt underneath it.

180 - Liv realizes that she made a terrible mistake.

181 - Aaron says, no, Liv, you can’t have the blanket. It’s mine, I mean ours. Get one from your room if you’re cold. And: What do you need the blanket for if you’re not cold?

182 - Robert laughs until he cries and it’s not because Aaron’s hand on his rib cage is tickling him; that touch is nothing but pleasant.

183 - Liv is very happy with the stupid Vespa chair thing that she conned Robert into buying. Not because she actually likes the stupid Vespa chair thing - it’s such pretentious hipster crap, she’s surprised it didn’t come with it’s own seat of 80s headphones and Radiohead on a loop. No, because she saw it when Robert dragged her to the 50th furniture store, and she thought, now there’s an idea how to get myself a moped.

184 - Aaron hates the Vespa. Not because it is unnecessarily flashy and kind of pointless - Aaron has a thing for unnecessary flashy and kind of pointless; hell, he _married_ unnecessary flashy and kinda pointless. No, he hates the Vespa because it stands under the staircase and he just keeps tripping over it every bloody time he walks past it. 

185 - Robert says from the sofa that it’s like it’s the budget version of Stephen King’s ‘Christine’. Aaron also hates Robert. Well, kinda.

186 - Liv demands to know what Aaron _does_ like about the Mill. The beer fridge is the obvious answer. Liv gets a little miffed because this is all Aaron talks about, why the hell did she and Robert spent ages on decorating the place if Aaron doesn’t appreciate any of it? 

187 - Aaron points out that he also loves the giant television. And the parrot-cuddle-blanket, Robert adds from the sofa without looking up from his book. Liv tells them both that they are the worst and stomps up the stairs.

186 - Robert waits until Liv is out of the room before he points out that Aaron also loves the dinosaur on the shelf behind the telly. Because Suggles is scared of the dinosaur. Aaron’s husband is a wise man.

187 - Liv stomps back down the stairs a while later. Her stupid brother and his stupid sex-maniac are making out on the couch. Of course. Liv throws the blanket over them, tiny parrots hiding the eew-factor. From under the blanket, Aaron shouts Oi, Liv what the - then Robert shuts him up.

188 - Aaron kisses Robert and reckons that whilst the air under the thick blanket is pretty shitty, Robert’s breathless laughter in the dark really isn’t.

189 - Robert kisses Aaron and thinks he might be on the way to suffocating, but that doesn’t mean that he will stop clinging to Aaron and trying to suck air from his lungs.

190 - Liv gets herself a milkshake from the fridge and thinks that the parrot-sex-blanket really wasn’t her best idea ever.

191 - Aaron secretly likes everything about the Mill’s kitchen. Not just the beer fridge. He likes the chrome and the fact that Robert’s undiagnosed OCD means everything has a proper place and no one is storing empty batteries, fake fingernails, and a knuckleduster in the drawer for the cutlery. (Living with Charity has not been Aaron’s most favourite experience.) Aaron also not so secretly also fancies himself to be a decent cook. In his mind, loving to eat is pretty much synonymous to being an excellent chef.

192 - Robert secretly disagrees with that assessment.

193 - Liv very openly agrees with that assessment after Aaron served them something that looks like a suicidal rodent has thrown himself under the wheels of the Mitsubishi and then its corpse got incinerated by a lazy funeral home director who couldn’t be bothered to burn it properly. She points that out before she leaves the table and slumps down on the couch with a bag of crisps.

194 - Aaron is offended.

195 - Robert throws the parrot blanket over Liv’s head.

196 - Liv yelps, then there is crunching of crisps and cussing, and when Liv’s head reappears from under the blanket, her hair got electrified from the friction and stands up.

197 - Aaron laughs heartily for the first time this week.

198 - Robert falls yet a little more in love with him. Then he tries the suicidal rodent. He falls a little out of love again.

199 - Liv yells at Aaron for a bit, then her head disappears under the blanket again, so she can have her crisps in peace while these two idiots she has to share her living space with stare adoringly into each others eyes or some shit.

200 - Aaron stares adoringly at Robert who does his best to eat the suicidal rodent and smile at the same time. Aaron thinks, I’m married to him, randomly, and is really very happy with life. Then he tries the result of his cooking. He is a little less happy with life.

201 - Robert orders pizza for them. 

202 - Liv yells that she wants pepperoni from under the blanket and can Robert or Aaron maybe fetch Suggles from upstairs, he’s surely gonna love her blanket cave. Both Aaron and Robert pretend they didn’t hear her. The move with the blanket, though, that kind of becomes a regular thing.

203 - Aaron throws the blanket over Robert and Liv on the couch when he comes back late from an extended round of darts with Adam at the Woolie. He doesn’t do it for them to stop annoying him - which they do a lot, but mostly when they are awake (the exception being Robert and his habit of kicking Aaron in his sleep) which they aren’t now. He does it because it’s coldish in the sitting room. Robert has his feet propped up on the coffee table and Liv’s maths book on his lap. Liv has her head on his shoulder and is snoring faintly. Both mumble something unintelligible when Aaron covers them with the blanket and then sits down on Robert’s other side to flick through the telly.

204 - Robert comes to the scrapyard, the blanket under his arm, when Aaron has a cold and refuses to acknowledge it. Subsequently, Aaron does all his paperwork for the day in the portacabin, looking like a human burrito.

205 - Liv throws the blanket over Robert when Robert sits with her at the kitchen table and just won’t stop talking about maths. Okay, fine, initially she asked him because her teacher is a moron and she doesn’t understand a word she is saying and Rob is actually good at explaining. Doesn’t mean he has to be such a nerd about it. Robert lets the blanket fall to the floor and he glares at Liv, and okay, fine maybe the blanket throwing isn’t such a good idea when there are beverages on the table in midst her textbooks.

206 - Aaron and Liv unanimously decide that - if Robert thinks he needs to spend the day in Leeds for whatever - they can very well afford skiving of work / school and playing video games all day. Mind, neither of them knows that the other one is skiving; Liv claims it’s teacher training day and Aaron claims... actually Liv didn’t pay attention to his excuse because she is too busy schooling his ass at Mario Party.

207 - Robert deeply regrets a lot of things in his life, most recently his choice of traveling partner. He thought that being able to ditch Nicola would be a great idea, and he didn’t listen when first Aaron, then Liv voiced concerns about the alternative (Robert, are you sure about this? / Rob, you’re a complete bellend). Now he has been stuck in traffic for two hours and 118 minutes of these Bernice talked about hair extensions. The two minutes unaccounted for? Liv instructing Robert to buy food for Suggles while Aaron made retching noises in the background. Best part of Robert’s day.

208 - Liv takes a short break from humiliating her brother because she is sure that she heard crickets outside, and she and Suggles leave Aaron to a practice run on his own in order to fetch Suggles a snack. As it turns out, it wasn’t crickets, it was Paddy sitting in a shrubbery, giving secret signals to Marlon. He looks up at her from where he is crouched and he opens his mouth to explain his reasons for this, but Liv and Suggles just give him a look of utter judgmentalism, then turn around and leave.

209 - Aaron still loses at Mario Party.

210 - Robert comes back unexpectedly early in the afternoon and when he pulls up in the driveway of the Mill, he thinks he will have to call the police since obviously a horde of hooligans invaded his peaceful home. It turns out that it’s less a horde and more a pair, and less hooligans and more, actually, Robert stands by his choice of words. His husband and his sort-of-daughter-slash-sister-in-law-whatever _are_ a pair of hooligans who yell abuse at the television and even more so at Robert, standing in front of it. Robert obligingly moves out of the way, and for a moment he contemplates ruining their perfect score by throwing the blanket over their heads. He doesn’t. Instead he sits down next to Aaron, their thighs touching, and covers himself with it. It takes a moment, then Aaron tugs at it, pulling a bit of it over his lap. So selfish, grumbles Liv, and pulls as well, so all three of them end up under it. Then Liv continues to make Aaron cry while Robert watches. Robert stands corrected. _This_ is the best part of his day.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [afraschatz](http://afraschatz.tumblr.com) on tumblr :).


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